


Eyes in a Moon of Blindness

by adrenalin211



Category: 24
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrenalin211/pseuds/adrenalin211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can't help the way the news overcomes him. The wonderful realization that he was wrong. That after giving up on it long ago, he can find hope now in the tiniest of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes in a Moon of Blindness

**Author's Note:**

> leigh57 and I write each other ridiculously smushy fic in email. These ficlets were never meant to be posted, but I wanted HER to post some so badly, so me posting was part of that trade-off. Anyway, these are two separate AU ficlets that assume Renee recovered after 8x17 and look at Jack and Renee's lives together afterwards. Thanks so much to leigh57 for the beta! The title is from U2 and the subtitles are from Matthew Perryman Jones (feat. Katie Herzig), and Vienna Teng.

  
**Guarding the Dreams and the Things Left Unsaid**   


She's sitting out on the deck on that porch swing she likes so much. They almost didn't buy this place because she had her eye on the blue and white Victorian with the wrap-around front porch and the plumbing problems. But he built her this deck with cedar wood and a bucket of nails as a compromise, all while she was at work one month and he needed distraction for his mind and his hands. When he made all the measurements and drew out the plan, Clapton blaring through the outdoor speakers, he'd felt like an architect. It reminded him of old dreams. Of being young.

She swings out there often, now. He watches her from the kitchen window as she reads her book and glides back and forth. He pours them wine.

The sun is setting, casting a glow around her hair and shadowing the freckles he's tried to memorize up close. His emotions sway like a pendulum in his chest, back and forth between the joy a phone call just brought him and the uncertainty of how to share it with her. Of how to broach a subject that’s burrowed itself between them with unspoken emotion.

"Hey," he says quietly, walking out the sliding door while balancing two glasses of wine in his hands. "Can I join you?"

She closes her book and scoots to one side of the swing. "You brought wine! You can do anything."

She's wearing her old jeans and a white t-shirt he remembers having his hands all over. She leans into the arm he drapes around the back of the seat as he sits, taking the Shiraz from his hand.

"You know what I love about this place?" she says, after they're silent for a few minutes. There are kids laughing a couple houses down. The sound of a basketball dribbling, dogs barking when they pass each other on the street.

Jack sips his wine, looking at her in interest.

"The backyard. The neighbors." She leans further into him and brings the glass to her lips. She inhales, hesitant, but Jack waits. Goosebumps rise on her arm. "I feel at home here," she says. "As much as anywhere can feel like home."

"I do, too," he says, turning in and placing a kiss on her mouth. He swallows. "That was Kim on the phone."

"Yeah?" she says. "How is she?"

Jack smiles. Kim lives in the next town over, a twelve minute drive when there's no traffic. (He clocked it once, wondering how long it was between him and an afternoon with his favorite four-year-old.) Before the words leave his mouth he pulls Renee closer, her goosebumps now gone.

"She's pregnant," he says, grin in his words and pride in his posture. He can't help the way the news overcomes him. The wonderful realization that he was wrong. That after giving up on it long ago, he can find hope now in the tiniest of things.

(The miracle inside of Kim. The way Renee's fingers interlock with his like complimentary grooves. Teri humming off-key to the radio.)

Renee turns to him and, despite his uncertainty over her reaction, meets his eyes and smiles the kind of smile you can't stop. "No way!" she says, like she's sinking her feet into the most comfortable sand. Her eyes glow. "I hope it's a boy."

"Me, too," he says, laughing, realizing then that the picture he's already created in his head is a little boy, or a girl in a baseball cap.

"I have to go call her!" Renee says, rummaging around for the phone she actually left inside, near the couch, he thinks.

"Could you wait a minute?" It’s not intentional, but his tone changes in a way she'll notice.

"What's wrong?" she says.

He finds her hand and tightens his fingers around it, tracing the ring she let him put there. "You would have kids. If not for me," he states, an unexpected tremor in his voice.

She stares at his forehead until he looks up and meets her eyes. "Is that why you didn't come out here bursting with excitement?" He just looks at her, because she verifies things through eye-contact like no one he's ever known. She squeezes his hand. "There's no 'If not for you', Jack," she assures. "We talked about this." He's rubbing his thumb over her palm as she speaks. "I want you a lot more than I ever considered having kids."

He must still seem uncertain because she just starts kissing him. His neck, cheek, lips. Then she leans her back fully against him and exhales as he wraps his arms around her. He rests his chin on her head.

"I don't want to hold you back," he whispers.

"I just want this," she says. "You let me be a part of all this. Of you and your family. Seeing Teri grow. This new baby..."

"I’m sure we'll be babysitting even more now," Jack says, laughing.

"Good," she says, kissing his forearm as she moves to get off the swing, adopting a new mood and encouraging him to migrate with her. "I'm gonna go find my phone and congratulate your daughter," she says. "When I come back..." she starts, raising an eyebrow, ".... we finish this wine and feel each other up?"

He laughs at the way she turns around quickly, but not fast enough that he doesn't see her crack a smile. "I won't say no to that," he says, still chuckling.

She disappears into their house and he watches her, again, through the glass door. She's flipping the cushions upside-down in search of her phone. When she finds it and dials, he imagines the conversation she's having with Kim. As he hears Renee's unadulterated enthusiasm permeate the wall between them, his inner pendulum stills. The remaining swaying sensation is nothing more than the steady glide of the swing, anchored by his feet on the deck.

 

**Sail Your Sea, Meet Your Storm**

When she turns off the shower and steps out to reach for a towel, she feels the breeze drift in from the open window. It’s about eight o’clock on a summer evening and the nighttime is creeping up fast, but the leaves are rustling faster, the promise of a storm. There’s that scent in the air: ocean mixed with the fresh smell that floats around before it rains hard. A crackle of thunder in the distance, flicker of lights in the bathroom.

She wraps a towel around her as the cool air causes goosebumps to rise on her arms, a soothing contrast to the warmth of the shower water.

“Jack?” she calls, making her way down the hallway as the lights flicker completely out. It’s hard to navigate in the almost-darkness, but when she makes it to their room she sees the shadow of him, resting on the bed with the windows wide open, waiting for the deluge.

“The power went out?” he asks, opening his eyes when she appears in the doorway. “Stephen says it happens all the time here during storms.” They’re sharing a beach house with Kim’s family this week. The weather’s been nice up until now. The whole thing has been…nice.

“Where’d they go?” she asks, because she only hears the trees swaying outside and the wind chimes the neighbors have above their entryway. Teri’s little voice is never silent this long.

Jack sits up in the bed, rubbing fatigue out of his eyes, or at least the evidence of it. His voice is groggy, like he’s been dozing. “Stephen promised Teri a milkshake if she worked on her doggie-paddle today.”

Renee laughs, walking over to the dresser to pull out some clothes to change into. “Did she? I didn’t see.”

“Not really, but Stephen says it counts,” he says, chuckling. Jack’s told stories about when Kim was a little girl. He was the same way.

The rumble of thunder now feels closer, the smell of earth growing stronger. She looks around the room. “Are there any flashlights or candles?” She pulls open the dresser drawer to find some jeans and throws them on the bed. They land on the bottom of Jack’s feet, but he doesn’t move. “There’s no light in the bathroom. You’ll have to change my bandage,” she says.

Jack sits up, swinging his legs to the side of the bed and motioning for her to come closer. “How’s it look?” he asks, and when she’s standing between his knees he unwraps her towel, focusing only on the patch of gauze and the medical tape that’s covering it completely. In the leftover light, he gently traces his fingers over the edges.

His touch is delicate as his fingers move to peel back the bandage.“I think the antibiotics are working,” she manages, acutely aware of her nakedness and his fingers. “The redness is gone. It’s just…tender.”

Jack stretches towards the nightstand drawer and finds a flashlight. When he shifts his body back and centers hers, he’s not focusing on the bandage, but his eyes dart up and down quickly before settling on her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head quickly. “Sorry. Did you want to put on your clothes first?”

“Do you want me to?” she whispers as he moves his eyes to her wound. She runs her hand through his hair, and despite feeling exposed and chilly, she sometimes just wants him to see her. All of her. Not only the glimpses he catches when his body is all over hers, but the whole picture at once.

“Not really,” he says, looking back up at her and grinning. He’s absently rubbing his thumb across her hip bone. She can hear the rain start, a slow drizzle as the clouds move in.

“This is okay,” she says as reassuringly as she can manage, because Jack doesn’t easily forgive himself when he thinks he’s done something wrong. He turns on the flashlight, but before redressing the wound, he kisses her ribcage, just beside the stitches that flared up a week ago right before this trip. Her fingers brush across his ears and she shuts her eyes for a moment, listening.

He applies the ointment and gauze gently over the slightly inflamed flesh, asking her to hold the flashlight when he needs both hands. By the time his finger flattens the last piece of tape across her stomach it’s almost completely dark in the room. The thunder crackles and the clouds open. Jack rubs his hands up her chilly arms before moving to shut the windows.

She grabs her discarded towel as he’s coming back to the bed. Now it’s the sound of rain pounding against the roof and windows.

He reaches for her hand before she moves to go get dressed. “Can I look at you?” he asks, and with the flashlight as the sole dim source of illumination she can only decipher his intention through his nervous posture and the soft cadence of his voice.

“Like this? Naked?” she asks, her heart alive in her chest. “You already are,” she whispers.

“I mean...” He clears his throat. She can see him clenching together the hand that’s holding her towel. His silhouette hangs apprehensively. “I was looking, but I wasn’t… _looking.”_

“Oh.” She finds that she’s no longer, not even a little bit, cold.

He’s guiding her onto the bed, leaving the flashlight on the nightstand, pointed in her direction. He crawls over her, lying on his side and facing her. She can see the shadow of his eyelids on her face, aware that at this angle, he can see her a lot more than she can see of him. She stares at the ceiling and waits.

“Yeah?” he says, seeking permission.

“Yes.”

The rain falls. Jack’s eyes move around her body, his hands following their path. Her breath hitches, her body wanting to fast-forward to the part where he’s kissing her everywhere.

His fingers are warm and teasing, following a path across her waist, her breasts, the outside of her thighs.

“Jack…” she whispers hoarsely, arching into his touch. A bolt of lightning illuminates his delicate discovery and she thinks, fleetingly, about what it’d be like if he were more in pace with the storm. But his slow attention to detail distracts her from all other thoughts.

His lips begin to track the path of his hands, his eyes still glued to her body as he lowers his head. She feels his mouth, hot, on her ribcage, her navel, the skin in between her breasts.

“Let me touch you, too,” she breathes out, her hand slipping under the collar of his t-shirt and down his back. He exhales onto her damp skin, sending shivers through her body.

He pulls back to take in the full picture. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.

Renee swallows, her hands shaking as they find his shoulder. “How long until they get home?” she manages.

“They’ll wait out the storm,” he whispers, his head lowering to touch his lips to hers.

“We have time,” she says into his mouth.

She hears the wind outside, the chimes moving with it, and the smacking of water against the windows, but she centers herself in the relative quiet of the room. In the rhythm of Jack’s breath and the pace of his pulse, steady. Heavy next to hers.


End file.
